Cambridge scientists have spotted gut bacteria that greedily soak up PFAS “forever chemicals,” then ferry them safely out of the body in animal tests, removing up to three-quarters of the toxins within minutes. Their findings hint at probiotic pills that could shield people from PFAS-linked cancers, fertility issues, and heart disease while lawmakers scramble to rein in 4,700 widespread compounds.
I wonder if there are other ways pfas might be circulated out of the bloodstream and back into the digestive system to be collected by this microfauna.
One of the ways oats and oatmeal reduce the amount of cholesterol in your body is by binding to the cholesterol in bile so it’s excreted instead of being re-absorbed. So the cholesterol could already be in the bloodstream, converted into bile, then excretes with the oats once it’s combined. This clearly has multiple essential organs helping the process, but still, a mechanism like this could still make a difference over time.
There’s some evidence for the same mechanism of action reducing PFAS:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041008X24003879
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-025-01165-8
Even better, those studies are testing dietary fibre generally, not just oats, so anyone eating their daily fruits and vegetables is already getting that benefit.
Welp, I’m having oats for breakfast tomorrow 😄
Just gotta make sure they aren’t already full of microplastics.